Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (43 page)

The elevator took off.

Numbers flashed by faster than Cole could read and gravity pressed him toward the floor. The elevator shuddered and bucked as it rocketed upward, while overhead, the cables began to squeal. By the wall, Brogan stood immobile, giving no more indication that he noticed the turbulence than he did the fact he still gripped Cole’s arm.

Another burst of magic left the wizard’s hand. With gut-wrenching deceleration, the brakes dragged the elevator to a halt.

The door opened. The room beyond was empty, and the breadth of the building itself. Concrete pillars supported the ceiling, and nothing but grit and construction dust covered the bare floor. A bank of windows lined the far wall, giving a bird’s eye view of the city that only his father’s office rivaled.

Brogan hurled him forward.

He tumbled to the ground a few yards from the elevator, pain shooting through his shoulder as it took the brunt of the impact, and dust rose around him, choking his instinctive gasp. Coughing, he scrambled for his feet, trying to ignore the pain throbbing through his arm as he scanned the room for the wizard.

Hands clasped behind him, Brogan walked from the elevator.

Cole backed away. “Where are we? Why–”

“What is the Merlin’s strategy?”

The Blood’s tone was patient, as though despite the fact people were dying on the floors below, he hadn’t a single concern.

“What’s the…?” Cole repeated, retreating farther into the room. Emptiness surrounded him, and the exit to the stairs was a hundred yards away. Between him and the elevator, Brogan waited like a wall, his hands folded peaceably at his back.

Cole swallowed, suddenly feeling very aware of the gun tucked beneath his jacket, and how thin a line between him and whatever Brogan planned it really formed. The giant would block anything the moment he spotted the weapon. Bullets only killed wizards if they didn’t see the shots coming.

And in Brogan’s case, maybe not even then.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You have one chance to live,” Brogan said. “Tell me the truth – the
real
truth this time – of all they intend and where I can find the queen, and I will take you to your father. Lie to me…”

A cold smile surfaced briefly before disappearing beneath the implacable ice of his face.

Cole shook his head cautiously. “I-I don’t know.”

“Do not waste my time, Cole.”

He hesitated. “I’m just here to help my dad.”

The smile reappeared, tinged with wry disbelief.

“I am,” Cole insisted. “I want to help him. I… he can stop this.”

“He will.”

Cole couldn’t bring himself to respond.

Drawing a contemplative breath, Brogan tapped his hands together as he paced away from the elevator. “It would be nice to trust you. To believe you truly have the king’s best interest at heart. You are, after all, his only child and heir. Who else should be loyal to him, if not you?”

His gaze slid to Cole. “And I’m certain that’s the point. Your father would do anything for you.
Has
done anything for you. He would burn heaven and earth for your sake and, despite all evidence to the contrary, he would still risk everything we have built for the hope his son could be saved. You know this.” Brogan’s face darkened. “And so does the queen.”

Cole shook his head. “I’m not–”

In an instant, the wizard was across the room, his weight driving Cole back till he slammed into one of the concrete pillars. The air rushed from his chest with the impact, but before he could breathe again, Brogan’s hand was around his throat. Instinctively, he grabbed the giant’s fingers, fighting to break his grip.

He may as well have tried to bend stone.

“You fled to her,” Brogan said. “You stole her sister away with her. You have travelled about in her company for the better part of these past weeks, barring the time you spent coercing your father into believing you were on his side. And now you are here, just as the Merlin are attempting to attack. Everything you have done puts your protests to a lie, and if you do not tell me what she plans right now, the king will be mourning your tragic death, which I was too late to stop from occurring at the hands of the Merlin queen.”

Air came rough around Brogan’s fingers while the gun pressed sharply into his spine, the weapon pinned between the concrete and the weight of the giant crushing him to the wall. Desperately, Cole swung hard toward the wizard’s gut.

Brogan tensed as the blow struck, and otherwise barely moved.

“You can’t–” Cole rasped.

“Yes,” Brogan countered, utter certainty in his voice. “I can. I said your father would do anything for you.” He paused. “Sometimes, even kings must be protected from themselves.”

The giant’s face drew in close. “Tell me where to find her.”

Cole choked, one hand dropping to his side for the gun while the other clawed at the wizard’s grip. “I don’t–”

“Yes, you do.”

“No… didn’t tell me… don’t…”

Brogan regarded him, paying no attention to the fingers grasping at his own.

And then his eyebrow shrugged equitably. “Very well.”

Brogan’s hand clenched tighter. Darkness and sparks of blinding light spread like wildfire across Cole’s vision and blood throbbed in his head, unable to escape. His body panicked, screaming for oxygen and his fingers scrabbled for the weapon, scraping past the concrete till they wrapped around the gun.

Frantically, he yanked the weapon from behind him and then pulled the trigger.

The grip on his neck vanished. He crashed to the floor, his legs unable to hold him. Coughs wracked him as air burned over his throat, and he blinked hard, fighting to see past the darkness disappearing too slowly from his eyes.

Brogan lay on the ground a few feet away.

Trembling, Cole staggered to his feet, the gun still clutched in his hand.

Blood pooled beneath the wizard and red-soaked bullet holes clustered near the center of his motionless chest.

Eyes never leaving Brogan, Cole inched closer.

In Hollywood, the bad guy always got back up. In Hollywood, the monsters never really died. Even Ashe hadn’t been able to kill Brogan. Neither had anyone else who’d come up against the man.

The gun shook as he lifted it, aiming at the wizard’s head.

In Hollywood…

He turned his face away and squeezed the trigger again.

A rough breath escaped him. He lowered the gun to his side.

Adrenaline faded, leaving nothing but shivering. His fingers played over the grip of the weapon, as though uncertain whether to let go.

Seconds crawled by. His eyes crept up to the room, and the god-like perspective of the windows. The height was familiar. The view too. His father had to be close. Maybe only a couple floors away, if not closer still.

And Ashe would be coming.

He headed for the stairs.

*****

The door slammed closed on Brogan and Cole, and it was all Harris could do not to swear.

Whatever semblance of a plan anybody’d had in all this was disintegrating faster than a sandcastle in a hurricane.

Resisting the urge to punch something, he took to the stairs again. The boy would be fine. Trapped with the giant and his father, but fine.

It was the girl blowing up the building to rescue her sister who was in real trouble now.

Another explosion shook a lower level as he rounded the landing. Screams rose with the smoke this time, cutting off with a sickening sharpness that could only mean the wizard hadn’t been able to fly. Gripping the banister, he ran faster and didn’t look back.

It wasn’t like there’d be any point.

The fifteenth floor came into view, the number painted large on the concrete wall by the door’s side, and he skidded to a halt, trying to regroup. Barreling in wouldn’t do any good. Whether or not the wizards saw him as a threat, startling them would probably still get him killed.

He drew a breath, running a hand over his hair and then straightening his sports coat. Habit drove him to check his gun in its holster and pure survival made him step to one side before punching his access code into the keypad. No magic flew out as he tugged the door open, and he couldn’t hear any shouting coming from the corridor beyond.

Cautiously, he leaned around the doorframe.

Security cameras were locked on him up and down the hall.

Rapidly, he schooled his face into as purposeful an expression as he could manage, and then stepped through the doorway. A hall stretched in either direction from him, looping the circumference of the building with staid offices that barely interrupted the colorless walls. Another corridor ran directly ahead, peppered with more cameras and ending in a metal door, and only the hiss of the ventilation system broke the eerie quiet as the stairwell exit closed behind him.

A wizard leaned her head out of an office, and he barely stopped himself from grabbing his gun. Her cold expression became disgusted, and then she disappeared back inside.

Forcing himself to breathe and hiding an annoyed expression of his own, he started toward the metal door. Guards in the offices. Of course. The narrow hallway he was currently walking along would bottleneck any assault and the guards could cut off retreat, turning this little corridor into an instant killing ground.

It was a decent strategy, all things considered.

He wondered what other security measures they had up here that he couldn’t see.

Drawing another breath, he kept going, trying to ignore the soft whir of the cameras as they turned to follow him. That magic was a part of the defense was obvious; a moment’s thought on the subject made his eyes want to slide from every surface he could see. And the security codes for the doors would potentially slow
someone
down, though probably only someone like him. As it stood, he’d only made it this far because Brogan had long since given orders that, second only to the protection of Jamison himself, the last fallback for the building’s defense was the outer hallway of this floor.

But that meant nothing for the protections they’d have in the office at the end of the hall.

He had no idea how he was going to get those shields down.

Another breath struggled into his lungs. The barriers were linked throughout the building by magic and computers combined and, barring the chance they’d just installed a big red button on the thing, both would present a problem. He couldn’t do anything about the one, and had never exactly been a master of the other, and as nice as it would be to just pull out his gun and shoot something, he doubted that would actually accomplish anything.

His mouth tightened. It didn’t matter. He’d just have to figure something out.

The security office door had obviously been purchased with the goal of withstanding a battering ram in mind. His knuckles hit the metal with a dull thud, and silence answered, unchanging as the seconds stretched and the cameras stared like gun sights at his back.

Trying not to grimace, he lifted a hand to knock again and then hesitated. Brogan was occupied with fighting the Merlin or protecting Jamison. The odds of anyone being able to confirm anything with him quickly were minute at best.

Hopefully, anyway.

He pounded on the door. “Open up! I have orders from Brogan!”

Nothing happened.

He hit the metal surface again. “I said I–”

The door swung back. His heart plummeted like a rock, hitting his stomach hard.

“What do you want?” Simeon snapped.

“I have–”

“We heard you. What?”

“I–” he started, and then faltered as his eyes went beyond the man. The gray office sprawled across the width of the fifteenth floor, excluding the space left for the outer halls, and little else filled the room. Guards stood around an area enclosed in green glass and shimmering magic at the center of the room, within which sat other wizards watching computer screens. More monitors lined the office walls, each of them scrolling images of every floor.

He fought the urge to curse. Of course they could see the halls. What’d he think they had cameras for? Which meant they would’ve seen Brogan take Cole and–

“Spit it out,” Simeon ordered.

Hell with it.

“Brogan’s got Cole,” he said. “Found him downstairs. We need to get the boy to a secure location, and Brogan sent me to check if everything was clear to bring him here.”

Simeon regarded him flatly. “Brogan sent
you?”

Harris feigned an apologetic shrug. “He needed the wizards to hold off the Merlin. And he’s protecting Cole.”

Irritation and disgust flickered across Simeon’s face in equal measure as he ran his gaze over Harris again. “Tell Brogan this location is just–”

Klaxons blared overhead.

“What the hell?” Simeon barked, looking beyond Harris to the hall and then turning to the office. “Where’s the breach?”

“Northwest stairs, sir!” a woman shouted, her hand to an earpiece as she relayed the information. “Keller’s on his way and the guards have them contained–”

The door on the far side of the room exploded.

Harris darted around the swiftly closing door as Simeon took off across the office, the wizards around the glass cube a step ahead of him. An onslaught of magic lashed out at them, cutting down four of the guards instantly and making Simeon falter, his defenses shuddering. Fire roared in the hallway and smoke billowed through the door, turning the Merlin into lethal ghosts in the shadows. Lightning raked the room and then struck the cube, setting the iridescent barrier alight. Blue-green electricity snarled as it spread like a web over the surface, engulfing each side and growing brighter by the second.

Till the glass shattered.

Harris hit the deck as shards exploded across the office to smash into the walls. Covering his head with his arms, he cringed at the sound of screaming and the sting of glass raining down.

Simeon gave an inarticulate snarl. Lifting his head from the protection of his arms, Harris only had time to see the defenses around Simeon go opaque, and then the wizard’s magic rushed outward with a roar. Tiles stripped from the ceiling and floor as the magic passed, as did the glass and debris, and all of it lunged straight for the Merlin. Amid the lightning and smoke, defenses glinted like crystal balls, but as the Blood’s assault continued, some of them flickered and failed.