Chapter Twenty-Three
“We need to get out of this room,” Xi said.
“My clothes...” Heng lurched toward the dresser, but Xi intercepted him.
“Are not worth your life.” Xi pulled Heng toward the exit.
“I am trying to divest myself of worldly concerns,” Heng said, his voice rich with humor. He followed Xi without complaint.
“How can you find any of this humorous? She can lead them back to the village. Are you an idiot not to realize that?” Leander demanded, and then he flushed at his own unacceptable behavior.
Heng grinned at him. “Your concern is noted,” he said as if Leander hadn’t just been totally out of line. Keeping a sarcastic retort behind his teeth, Leander followed.
Xi led them to the end of the hall. “Three people are moving toward us. I’m going to lose them when they go into the sunshine. Is there another way out of here?”
“Staff exit.” Heng turned and headed back to an unmarked door in the middle of the corridor before raising his arm. “I’ll create an illusion to distract—” Heng gasped and fell to one knee. He braced one hand against the floor and the other clutched his chest.
“Well, crap. Your magic is still bruised,” Xi said.
Heng gulped down several breaths, clearly trying to control the pain. “En. I have noticed. How long does this last?” Heng asked, and for the first time, he looked genuinely distressed. Neither poison nor Leander’s sharp tongue had left him this shaken and pale.
“I was significantly sicker when Lian cured me. But I still can’t use too much magic, and using shadows even to watch makes my insides feel raw,” Xi admitted.
He got a hand under Heng’s elbow and hauled him upright.
Leander hurried to Heng’s other side, and together they supported him as they pulled him through the staff door and then fled down a dirty hallway lined with shelves full of linens and toilet paper and cleaning supplies.
The far end had a curtain rather than a door, and it led to a small alcove with an elevator door covered in proclamations outlining how much toilet paper should be left in each room and listed the rules for requesting days off.
Heng gestured to the stairs next to the elevator.
Maybe he was afraid they would be trapped if one of the Druwolf’s people could control electricity. That worried Leander.
The three of them half-stumbled down the stairs and ended up in a windowless room with more employee notices, but so far no employees. “So Lian is the only one with full use of his magic,” Heng summarized with a soft laugh. “We shall rely on your excellent control of plants to keep us alive.”
Leander stared at him blankly, not sure how he thought that was a reasonable reaction.
“Or we run like hell,” Xi said. “No offense, but I don’t think flowers are going to take out Druwolf’s enforcers.”
“I would take offense, only you are likely correct,” Leander admitted. He could handle one enforcer only because Druwolf’s people would underestimate him. But he was not going to be able to handle three of them. The second he showed his powers, one of them would counter him.
“The door leads to an alley. Min and I used it rather than the front so the people we watched could not track us back to the hotel if they spotted us.” Heng pulled his arm free from Xi’s grip and opened the door.
A cacophony greeted them. Carts and small shops filled every inch of wall space, and shoppers shoved their way through the crowds with baskets filled with produce and eggs and probably things Leander with his Western diet didn’t want to think about.
The alley behind the hotel was a different world.
Leander relaxed as he felt the sharp strength of peppers and the calming, reinforcing power of tea.
He inhaled the protective aura of garlic and the whispers of flowers.
None of them were as strong as if they’d still be connected to the earth through roots, which might explain why Leander had not felt these earlier, but still. .. this was power.
“Maybe we should hide here,” Leander suggested.
He sent his magic dancing with the plants, feeling for any surges in magic.
Plants were far more sensitive than most people understood, whether that meant bracing against foreign magic or sending out chemical signals to warn neighbors of invasive pests.
Plants were powerful sentinels. These were cut and weakened, but Leander still felt strong here in a way he hadn’t in the hotel room.
“There are a lot of civilians here,” Xi said. “I don’t think we want a fight here.”
Heng grimaced. “Lian, qidi of my heart, I would trust you to avoid bringing a building down on some innocent family shopping for jianbing, but I don’t think I would trust our enemies to have the same restraint. Xi is right. We should move to a less populated area.”
Heng’s naivete was amusing because Leander would not only bring down a building but also burn the world to ash to protect the handful of people he loved.
That terrified him because he understood the depth of evil he would descend to.
He’d done it before, after all. “Then where would you suggest we go? I assume Min knows any place you hoped to use for a safe retreat.”
Heng grimaced. “I feel like a fool for not recognizing her avarice.”
“Maybe we can worry about scorned women after we deal with the trained killers after us,” Xi said.
Leander said, “Unless you misread your shadows, the scorned woman problem and the trained killers problem are now the same problem.”
Now it was Xi’s turn to grimace, but Heng shook his head, clearly disagreeing. “Min has done terrible things, but I do not believe she wants me dead or that she will lead killers to me.”
Xi snorted, but before he could say anything, Leander had put an elbow in his side. “Then let’s just move,” Leander said. “Where is your closest safe haven?” he asked.
“That way.” Heng gestured west, but something in Leander’s soul told him that was a terrible idea. Maybe Xi felt the same because he took a step to the east.
“Whatever Min expects, we should do the opposite.” Xi took another step to the east.
“There are industrial buildings in that direction,” Heng said, but he was also inching to the east.
“Great,” Xi said. “If we want to get away from innocent bystanders, that sounds perfect.” He still had a hand on Heng’s elbow as if he was waiting for the man to collapse.
“That’s logical,” Leander said, but there was something bothering him.
Before he could say anything, Xi and Heng started fast-walking down the center of the alley, dodging shoppers with their enormous baskets.
Leander followed, but he snagged the magic of the plants as he hurried after them.
He wound pepper essence through his magic like yarn on a skein, pulling it along.
He held the essence of sleep from chamomile and a strain of poison that would leave a victim nauseated.
He was so distracted he nearly knocked a woman over, and she blasted him with profanity so explicit and specific that Leander fled from her tongue–the magic he was spinning chasing him as he ran.
The crowds thinned and small push carts and tiny shops yielded to weather-worn buildings with no signs. They had covered about a mile when they came to an abandoned building, the door standing open and the lower windows boarded.
“Let’s go in there and call for some help,” Heng said.
Leander eyed the empty street. “This feels like a bad idea,” he said, but he also understood why Heng wanted to go into the warehouse.
They could get out of sight and call someone from the village.
Aunty Daiyu needed to know Huang Min was an utter psychopath who had probably killed people over a crush and an assumption.
And hopefully she would know someone who could send them help because they had left the car far too close to the hotel to risk going back for it.
Xi checked the road in both directions. “We need to get out of sight and catch our breaths.”
Leander couldn’t argue that. He was not the most physically fit man, and he regretted that now.
Holding his plant magic close, he followed Heng, who now followed Xi.
He could see the shadows grow darker as Xi moved cautiously into the dark interior.
Either the building had suffered a minor explosion causing most of the interior walls to crumble, leaving concrete chunks and dust everywhere or this had been one of those tofu buildings put up so cheaply the building materials had failed almost immediately.
Once they were all inside, Leander took a deep breath and the panic started to ease. He had a good five seconds to feel relief before a voice shattered that illusion.
“Look who we have here,” said a man with a thick Boston accent. He stepped out of the shadows, all broad shoulders and thick mustache and dad bod, complete with a round belly that would have made him a good Santa Claus impersonator. However, Santa had never sounded so murderous.
“Vaughn,” Xi said, and from his tone, this guy was as deadly as he sounded.
A woman followed him. She was younger—late twenties maybe—but she had pure white hair, olive-toned skin, and a tattoo at her temple. Xi didn’t address her, so either he didn’t recognize her or she wasn’t a threat.
Leander wasn’t willing to bet the second was true, not if Druwolf had sent her.
He stepped in front of Heng. Unfortunately, Heng moved to Leander’s side and brought his hands up in a defensive pose.
Gritting his teeth, Leander quashed the urge to call Heng an idiot.
With his magic damaged, he couldn’t fight these people.
Instead, he focused on drawing and distilling the plant magic he’d dragged with him from the market.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here, cop.”
“Surprise,” Xi said dryly.
“Fuck you, and fuck this traitor. Where’s the boy?
” Vaughn raised his hands, and the surrounding shadows darkened, several reaching for Xi.
Shit. He controlled shadows too. Leander looked at Xi in panic, but he was focused on Vaughn, sweat breaking out along his hairline.
He was using his own shadow magic, but as much power as Xi had, his magic was bruised.
Leander concentrated the pepper magic he held, drawing it down from the air and holding it close to him.
He had to let go of several other threads to manage it, but he finally got enough to be a lethal dose.
Raising his hands, he pushed the magic toward Vaughn.
The asshole was so focused on Xi he didn’t twitch as death approached.
The woman raised her arm, but Heng grabbed a small chunk of broken concrete from the floor and flung it at her with remarkable accuracy.
With a cry, she stumbled back, blood dripping from a cut on her forehead, and Leander shoved the magic of the peppers into Vaughn.
he choked immediately. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he gasped for air, his breathing ragged and pained.
Within seconds, Vaughn couldn’t make any sound at all. His chest heaved as though he was trying to draw breath, but his throat had closed. His body jerked and spasmed before he tumbled to the ground. Xi took several steps back, and even from this angle, Leander could see his shock and horror.
“You asshole,” the woman screamed, and she threw her hands up. Heng had been in the middle of launching another piece of concrete, but wind blasted him, knocking him off his feet and slamming him to the ground hard enough that he didn’t get back up.
Leander scrambled to gather the plant magic he had released when focusing on the peppers.
Wisps of it still hung in the air, but too much had dissipated.
The woman raised a hand toward Leander, and he stumbled back, bracing himself for a wind attack.
She launched her wind at the same time as shadows wrapped around her body.
Leander was thrown back several feet, but he stayed on his feet.
The woman turned her attention to Xi. Wind crashed through the warehouse, and even at the edge of the attack, Leander felt the bitter cold in his bones.
Xi was knocked to his knees, and he shivered.
When Leander couldn’t find enough magic around him to form another attack, he took a lesson from Heng and picked up a chunk of concrete.
Only he didn’t throw it. He charged the woman, his impromptu weapon held high.
She turned on him, and ice clawed at Leander’s skin.
He tried to press forward, but his muscles shook so much he fell to one knee.
She looked at him with such vicious glee that Leander knew he was about to die.
Even the fear wasn’t enough to give him the strength to get off the floor, though.
She raised her hand, but before she could gather her weather magic again, shadows crawled up her body, tendrils encircled her head, and she gave one scream that was cut off as shadows covered her mouth and nose.
Like with Vaughn, her body jerked, and she clawed her face—the shadows solid enough to suffocate her.
Her struggles slowed before she fell to the floor.
Leander turned to Xi. He was still on the floor, as was Heng, but his hand was raised and sweat dripped from his chin.
With bruised magical pathways, creating solid shadows must have been an unbearable pain.
Leander took a step toward Xi, but he froze as a slow clap echoed through the warehouse.
“My, my. I had not expected to find such trouble on this trip. I suppose I shall have to handle this problem myself.” Cadell stepped out from behind a half-crumbled wall. Druwolf’s second-in-command had come for them himself, and the darkness around him was much more terrifying than Xi’s shadows.